Record your Settings - filed under 'Duh, oh yeah huh?'

One of the most requested features is the ability to store our established settings with the files we upload.
so simple it never occurred to me, but you can.
With the ability to “rename” your file, just type them in with the title. They won’t auto-populate, but at least the information is logged with the file for reference. :sunglasses:

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You da Man! :grinning:

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When it dawned on me I was like 'Really? As long as I have wished for that the solution it was under my nose?"
Support has probably been snickering for a while. :rofl:

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I like this for simple things, but I still REALLY REALLY want a way to save the whole setup.
Layer order, colors mapped to custom settings, scaled, positioned, and rotated shapes, all of that!

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I like this with its simplicity but being the anal-retentive I am I will probably start a complex spreadsheet at some point.

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I’ve already got one of those… :roll_eyes:

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I certainly hope this is nearing the top of the legendary Hopper, it’s pretty important. This is like having a word processor that supports printing with elaborate formatting, but only saves the files as plain text.

They may be reluctant to create a feature that starts adding vast numbers of files or database records to The Cloud. There are some significant usability and technical features to solve for what is such a simple idea.

I would be perfectly happy if the system could create a settings file that I stored locally, and sent to the device UI the same way you send your SVG… kind of like the “sidecar” XML files that a digital photo editor uses to hold the “developer” settings for raw files. That approach has its own challenges but they appear more manageable to me.

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That’s a great idea! I do something similar with my CNC router. I name each cut file with the name of the project, the sequence number I want to cut it in, and the name and diameter of the cutter for that operation.

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Yup. A metadata file approach was one of my first suggestions when I got the beta unit. They are already saving all our design files as SVGs. The SVG format is based on XML, and you can extend it to include any arbitrary data you want. I would tackle it by including their custom data as part of the file, and that way there is only one thing to store per design.

Being able to upload/download these extended files would be awesome since it opens up the possibility of preflight and scripting your own “CAM” system.

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Download would be awesome!
With the failure of that hard drive, there are several files that escaped because they were in the UI. Wish I could download and further manipulate them.

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I built something like this, but sometimes when the UI changes it breaks. I might release it when the UI is more stabilized. .

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That works for simple designs (I use that method for the Shopbot) but if you’ve got a half dozen operations by color and it’s just easier to do it in the spreadsheet. It would be better if the GFUI could do just save it though.

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Is there a way to find out if this will ever be a feature? I use a paper cutter to cut paper (Yeah, yeah), and it lets me save all the settings, to a cloud, too. Even if it was something that could be set locally, it would help. I want to be able to cut an entire board of the same item, as needed, and having to manually set each one is a pain.

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I agree that this is the most important functionality that is missing from the GFUI. It’s not a data storage in the cloud issue, storage is plentiful and cheap.

It’s very frustrating to spend time and waste material to create something and then forget to record the settings you used to achieve the final results. When someone says “Hey, that’s cool! Can you make me one?”, you reply “Sure”. Then you have to start from zero to recreate it because you don’t have the settings available. Very frustrating to say the least.

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I think one of the issues is that the software is still in beta. I have settings for chipboard that worked last month, but did not work yesterday. So they maybe hesitant to save setting and have them not work. It is different with the proofgrade since they know the material.

FWIW, that’s still a problem for those of us who take the time to write them all down in a spreadsheet or log of some sort. except we have to do the extra step of keeping the log.

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I can’t remember anything if it’s not in a spreadsheet or .doc!

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I’ve not tried using it, but isn’t there an “instructions” pane when you view a project in webui?

That’s what I keep saying! :roll_eyes:

This is why I keep my spreadsheet open at all times and record it on every pass until I get it perfect because I remember nothing. lol

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